Cars, buses, subways, and trains; Pretty much the extent of high-speed publicly-accessible mass transit. Now the Chinese have dreamt up a new mixed-up alternative, the traffic-straddling bus. It rides above roads, with cars passing beneath and costing little to implement.

The traffic-straddling bus is a design proposal from the Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Company which serves to solve many problems at once. The straddling bus is a combination of train and bus which rides on a set of rails embedded along the edges of traffic lanes and leaves space for cars and trucks up to 14 ft high to pass underneath. With this configuration it's cheap to implement in comparison to subways, takes up no additional corridor space like more train lines would, and almost immediately cuts traffic volumes once implemented. The system is all-electric and powered by solar and grid electricity

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Traffic in Beijing is awful, and much of the problem lies with the huge numbers of buses crowding the streets. This option allows mass transit to go truly mass, swallowing 1200-1400 passengers at a time and clearing the streets of dozens of buses with each straddler. This isn't some crazy dream either, China's central government has approved a pilot program in Beijing's Mentougou district, where an initial 115 miles of track is to be laid strarting by the end of the year. [ChinaHush]